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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27055465">The Good Soldier</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyjane/pseuds/crazyjane'>crazyjane</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Year Zero [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>VIXX</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Army, Gen, Inspired by Newsflesh Trilogy, Inspired by World War Z, Military, SpookyVIXX October, Zombie Apocalypse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:09:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,772</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27055465</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyjane/pseuds/crazyjane</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There was an official name for what they were fighting, of course. Some clever medical acronym that basically meant, ‘corpses that get up and walk around and try to chew your face off’. It was on all the official documentation, but once he’d left the briefing rooms at their forward base Hongbin had never heard it again. Out here, everyone knew what they were: zombies. The Americans serving with them had shortened that even further to ‘Zeke’, and, even though it had felt strange in Korean mouths at first, after a while everyone used that. It was easier; you didn’t have to think about what their names had been before, what sort of person they had been, who they’d loved.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Year Zero [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2312810</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Good Soldier</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I guess it was inevitable that sooner or later I'd write a story about Hongbin being in the army. And then somehow zombies happened, and ... well ... </p>
<p>prompt: cold</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rain had finally let up. Cold drops still pattered down on them from the trees above where they were hunkered down, somehow managing to find their way under Hongbin’s rain poncho. Beside him, Kim shrugged irritably as one slid down the back of his neck, grumbling. It wasn’t loud, but Hongbin’s eyes automatically scanned the area around them for movement. Nothing. He relaxed only fractionally, shifting his grip on his weapon. They were going to get hit again tonight; he knew that from experience. Last night had been a disaster, two men lost in a frantic, scrambling retreat after the platoon had stumbled into a hot zone and found themselves outnumbered. Two men he hadn’t been able to give the gift of a bullet in the head.</p>
<p>There was a soft chime in his ear. He reached up and tapped just below his ear, finger pressing against the metal under his skin. ‘Go,’ he whispered almost soundlessly, breath turning white in the air. </p>
<p>The voice in his ear, picked up and amplified by a similar implanted microphone, was Jeon’s. ‘<em>Still nothing here. Baek thought he saw something about an hour ago, turned out to be a deer</em>.’ There was a pause. ‘<em>Sarge, are you sure they’re coming? If there are still animals here …</em>’</p>
<p>Hongbin cut him off. ‘Which way did it go?’</p>
<p>‘<em>Uh, south. Back the way we came.</em>’</p>
<p>‘Shit. We’re going to get flanked.’ Hongbin thought quickly. ‘Squad.’ The command sent an immediate chime to everyone in the unit, sharp enough to wake those few who’d been sent to get an hour’s sleep. ‘Choi, form up with Jeon. Park, with me. Lee, you and Jung watch the south. Goggles and masks, radios live, go, go, go.’ There were muttered acknowledgements in his ear, not that he needed to hear them. He knew they’d already be moving. For all that they’d only been under his command for a couple of weeks, they already trusted him in a way that was more than slightly terrifying. </p>
<p>Once in position, the men sounded off. Hongbin opened a pocket and pulled out a small spray bottle, giving his goggles two quick squirts of anti-fog before settling them over his face. The mask was next, snapped into place on his helmet. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Kim and Park doing the same. Kim’s expression was completely blank, but Hongbin caught the tremor in his hands as he blew on them before fumbling with the catches on his mask. He knew what that was about, what they were probably all thinking. He needed to speak to that.</p>
<p>‘Okay. Listen up.’ He paused for a second. It wasn’t that he needed to find the right words. He’d given this speech enough times that he didn’t even have to think about what to say anymore. But this was the first time this squad would need to confront what he’d seen far too often; things wearing the faces of fallen comrades, with nothing human behind their eyes anymore.</p>
<p>There was an official name for what they were fighting, of course. Some clever medical acronym that basically meant, ‘corpses that get up and walk around and try to chew your face off’. It was on all the official documentation, but once he’d left the briefing rooms at their forward base Hongbin had never heard it again. Out here, everyone knew what they were: zombies. The Americans serving with them had shortened that even further to ‘Zeke’, and, even though it had felt strange in Korean mouths at first, after a while everyone used that. It was easier; you didn’t have to think about what their names had been before, what sort of person they had been, who they’d loved. </p>
<p>The squad were still listening. ‘Okay. We know this is a large, mixed pack, so expect hive behaviour. The shamblers will come at us first, waves of them. They’ll go down easy but don’t get distracted. Choi, Jung, keep an eye out for the runners using the shamblers as cover. They’ll come fast and stealthy. Take them out as quick as you can.’ Now the hard part. ‘You know what we’re going to see tonight. It won’t be easy, but they’re not our friends anymore. They’re Zeke. Say it back to me.’</p>
<p>The ragged chorus held little conviction, so Hongbin made them say it again. And again. It was cruel, he knew that. It was also necessary. He’d see too many men freeze when someone they’d fought alongside and laughed with came lurching out of the dark towards them. That fraction of a second of disbelief, of hope that there was still someone human in there, made them hesitate, and it always, always got them killed. Zeke never froze. </p>
<p>Finally satisfied that they were as ready as they were going to get, Hongbin finished up. ‘All right. Stay sharp, stay focused. I have faith in you. We can do this. We <em>will</em> prevail.’ As rousing speeches went, it was pretty lame, Hongbin thought. Still, it seemed to do the trick. He saw Park nod, Kim square his shoulders, heard the rest of the squad respond. And there it was, the feeling that somehow, yet again, a ragtag bunch of six-month veterans and raw recruits had become more than the sum of its parts. All of them dedicated to simple, stark, priorities - wipe out Zeke, protect the people at home, keep each other alive. All of them looking to <em>him</em>.</p>
<p><em>Not bad for a video game guy</em>, Hongbin thought with a wry smile. </p>
<p>When he’d first been reactivated, the men he’d been placed with gave him the respect due his rank, but his reputation had preceded him. Former idol who’d left the industry under a cloud, Twitch streamer who’d sat in his chair, played stupid games, and clowned for the camera for hours on end. Sure, he’d done his mandatory enlistment, earned his rank, but he could see in their eyes that they thought he’d be soft. They called him deokhu behind his back, and waited for him to break under the pressure of a <em>real</em> war.</p>
<p>He hadn’t broken. He’d <em>thrived</em>.</p>
<p>It hadn’t always been this way. As an idol, he’d always felt out of place. Second best at everything, awarded his place only because he’d had the luck to be born with a pretty face. Never really able to get beyond that, no matter how hard he’d thrown himself into improving his skills. A few acting roles, and he’d been good, he knew that, but ultimately, it hadn’t gone anywhere. Gaming had helped, building an identity for himself that had nothing to do with exacting standards of an industry that took in kids and churned out marketable products, but then that had come crashing down, too. Even after doing his two years in the army, he hadn’t been able to go back to that. He’d drifted from one thing to the next, coasting. Then the dead started rising, a bad horror movie trope turned into day-to-day reality, and - like thousands of others - he’d received the orders that dragged him out of his half-life, and into nightmare.</p>
<p>It had been a relief. </p>
<p>Thrown right into the thick of it, only a few days’ hurried instruction before he was deployed. Learning about the enemy he was going to face, the enemy that had once been the people he passed every day on the street. Every zombie was, ultimately, a walking sack of virus with one purpose; reproduction. So they bit, and spat, and the fresh ones whose blood was still liquid tore themselves open to fling their blood into the faces of living human beings. It only took a drop inhaled or swallowed or blinked into the eyes to start a runaway, unstoppable infection, so he was issued with body armour and hard masks and goggles. He learned that only the oldest zombies shambled slowly, that runners, the freshly-turned ones, moved fast, and that the bigger the pack, the more complex the hive-mind and the more unpredictable its behaviour. He learned that the only way to keep Zeke down was to shoot for the head, destroy the brain stem. And he learned he was as good at that in real life as he had been as a gamer. </p>
<p>Then they sent him out on his first patrol, and when he returned with only half the platoon, word had gotten around quickly. A junior lieutenant who’d led them into an ambush over the objections of his deokhu sergeant, who’d frozen when they were overrun. Who’d lost half his men, then gone down screaming himself and reanimated in seconds, but never made it back to his feet before that same sergeant stepped up with his sidearm and shot him point-blank in the face. And rallied everyone who was left to give those who had fallen the mercy of the bullet, and got the rest back to safety. Hongbin refused to talk about it outside his official report, but the story was out there. He’d been promoted, given a squad, and sent right back into the fight. </p>
<p>Now, Hongbin was something of a specialist. His squad was always one of the first into a new area, flushing out zombie packs, striking hard and fast to thin the numbers before the main force advanced. His reputation became something that earned him real respect, and his nickname took on a new meaning, one that he wore with a kind of ironic pride. Men under his command came and went, sometimes lost to attrition (but never, <em>never</em> left behind to become just another rotting body in a mob), sometimes deployed to other squads to teach what they’d learned from him. There was almost no down-time between returning to base to report on a patrol and being sent out again, but he didn’t care. He’d found where he belonged, finally, and while it was a place of blood and horror, it was where he needed to be. </p>
<p>Still no movement. There was something, though; a feeling, almost a taste in the damp air. <em>Not long now</em>, Hongbin thought to himself. </p>
<p>As he often did before a skirmish, he thought about the others. The ones from his old life. He’d once thought they would always be together, a weird little family united by exhaustion and adulation and a constant pressure to keep improving, to be the best. Back then, getting the choreo right had seemed a crucial skill, flubbing a note an unforgivable mistake. It had mattered so much to him; now, it seemed incredible that he could ever have cared so deeply about something so <em>useless</em>. He knew it was just a different perspective, hindsight, that made him see it that way, and that his ability to stay cool under fire and pick off zombies with a single shot would - assuming he survived - eventually become skills that had no place in a reclaimed world. Maybe then there’d be time for idols, again. But he couldn’t be part of that life.</p>
<p>He knew, more or less, where the others were. Hakyeon and Jaehwan were on the perimeter around the Seoul enclave, lucky enough to be able to see each other socially now and then, on furloughs that had grown increasingly rare as things escalated. It was the same sort of placement he’d had during his enlistment, manning the fence line; only here, there was no counterpart on the other side mirroring you, watching you as carefully as you did them. The troops on the perimeter were purely defensive. If Zeke ever got past the soldiers in the field, they were the last hope for the civilians.</p>
<p>Taekwoon, due to his health problems, was safe behind a desk. Sometimes Hongbin heard the men in his squad talking of those who couldn’t serve as though they were weak, cowards. He’d always shut that down quickly, because in the back of his mind he could always hear the frustrated, self-loathing tone of the vocalist’s voice in the last phone call they’d shared. Taekwoon hated that he wasn’t capable of being out there like the rest of them were, felt keenly that it was a personal failing even though he knew his problems were the fault of him being pushed too far by their agency. He wouldn’t last a day on patrol, though, and so Hongbin was glad to know that at least one of them was safe. Or as safe as anyone could be, these days.</p>
<p>Wonshik and Sanghyuk, poor bastards, had rotated into clean-up. Everyone had to do it, sooner or later, but it wore you down. You could spot someone who’d just come off that duty, drinking too much, never talking about it, but if you looked into their eyes you could see them remembering the bodies they’d hauled into the streets and burned. Rosters were carefully planned so that no one ever had to work in their own neighbourhoods, but sometimes, it was impossible to avoid seeing what was left of someone you knew, even just as a nodding acquaintance. Worst, though, were the children. Hongbin’s own turn had been six months ago, a lifetime. The smell of accelerant and charred flesh had clung to him for weeks afterwards, and he still dreamed, sometimes, of the pre-school in Pyeongchang-dong..</p>
<p>‘<em>Movement.</em>’ Jeon’s voice in his ear snapped Hongbin to full alertness. ‘<em>Maybe 20 metres, coming slow.</em>’ </p>
<p>At the same moment Hongbin saw something slipping through the trees, a little jerky in his movements but coming fast. A strange calm settled over him. ‘Runner, two o’clock,’ he said, raising his weapon. He fired, and the zombie dropped. It was wearing a uniform. </p>
<p>‘That was Hyunnie,’ said Kim. In his horror, he’d forgotten to sub-vocalise, but it didn’t matter because Hongbin’s shot had spurred the pack into full attack mode. The comms exploded with overlapping calls, barely audible above the sound of gunfire. </p>
<p>The pack was huge. Many more than Hongbin had glimpsed last night, at least twenty of them. Which meant there were probably almost as many on the other flank, and an unknown number of runners. Falling back wasn’t an option; any attempt to break south would expose them, get them picked off one by one. They had to make a stand here. ‘Conserve ammo!’ he ordered. ‘Lee, go right! Jung, left! Choi, Park, rake the legs!’ Immediately, the two M60s roared to life. It wouldn’t stop them, but they’d be forced to crawl. It would give the rest of his men the breathing space they needed to take out the runners without wasting too much ammunition.  </p>
<p>The first line of shamblers went down, those behind simply stepping on them as they advanced. Darting out between them, another runner. Hongbin fired, cursed as his shot blew a hole in its shoulder, settled himself and fired again. It fell in a tangle of limbs and didn’t move again. Then he caught sight of another, and another. <em>Too many runners</em>, he thought, <em>we’re fucked</em>. ‘Jeon!’ he barked.</p>
<p>‘<em>I see them!</em>’ Jeon’s voice was tight with adrenalin. He’d get the ones on his flank, Hongbin knew; after Hongbin himself, Jeon was the best shot in the whole squad. It was why, even though the former BTS maknae was relatively inexperienced, he'd been assigned to Hongbin's squad.</p>
<p>Someone was praying in his ear. Baek, probably. He carried a Bible with him in his pack, read from it every night. Kim was counting, timing his breaths in an effort to keep himself from panic. His voice curiously flat, Jeon reported that he’d taken out their other lost comrade. <em>No one left behind</em>, Hongbin thought, firing, moving to the next target, firing again. <em>No one else. Everyone walks out of here tonight.</em> </p>
<p>It was a promise, one he made every time. And maybe that promise was broken sometimes, but he was going to keep making it, because it was all that he had. <em>Everyone walks out of here tonight.</em></p>
<p>Then the first wave of shamblers reached them, and they fell back, surrounded, and there was no time for promises or prayers anymore. There was only the fight, and the desperate hope that they would survive to see another sunrise.</p>
<p>Even then, Hongbin knew it wouldn’t be over. He’d take what was left of his unit back to base, go through decontamination, eat, re-stock, and grab a few hours’ rest. Then another night patrol, another pack, another tiny battle in a war that felt like it was never going to end. It was exhausting. It was heart-breaking. Sooner or later, it was probably going to kill them all.</p>
<p>But it was where Hongbin belonged. </p>
<p> </p>
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